


Stories They Didn't Tell

by paradoxpangolin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestor-Era, Gen, more added later, when more things start happening, wiggler!signless
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:38:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradoxpangolin/pseuds/paradoxpangolin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>This is the story of the Signless,</em> says the man with a cue ball for a head, and he tells you a story that's been passed down through sweeps of trolls and even said to have originated from the mouth of the Disciple herself. But hundreds of sweeps and thousands of tellers tend to turn a story into myth; the events into grandiose and vaguely descriptive blurs, the characters into static figureheads instead of people. The tales whispered desperately around the fire at secret meetings of cultists just weeks after their leader's death are not quite the same as the tales the Summoner grew up hearing sweeps in the future, and those tales are not quite the same as the version that is widely told on Alternia today.</p><p><em>This is the story of the Signless,</em> he says. But he's only partially right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stars

**Author's Note:**

> So this is going to be my retelling of the story of the Signless and his family, entitled Stories They Didn't Tell because as figures who faded into legend, I doubt any of the stories circling around Alternia through the cult of the Signless and other sources brought much personal detail to them. Many legendary figures are portrayed as more wonder than person. I plan, for at least this set of legendary figures, to try and change that. Also there will probably be heavy musical themes because a lot of my inspiration comes while listening to music. Enjoy!! Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!! :D

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They told of how the Dolorosa saved the Signless from certain death in the brooding caverns and smuggled him to the surface. They didn't tell of how she yearned to see the stars long before then.

There are many entrances to the underground breeding caverns scattered over Alternia. They are typically located in caves, ones that don't end in ragged rock just a few meters in, ones that keep going farther back than most do. You can walk down through one of the caves, there's nothing to stop you...but it gets dark in here very fast, and the entrance is out of sight already with all the twists and turns. You could push forward into the blackness, but the sound of water dripping off the walls is indistinguishable from the click and clatter of some great _something_ dislodging stones as it creeps towards a blind and helpless snack. But that's just your mind overreacting, the adrenaline making you paranoid. Must be. The darkness encases and enshrouds you, heightens your remaining senses while numbing your mind. You _want_ to explore more, to press through your fear. You are weak and you are helpless, and the oblivion sees that and assures you that despite the sudden irregularity in the patter of what might not be drops of water on the floor, you'll come to no harm. If you can't see the danger, danger cannot see you. The darkness isn't frightening, it's comforting. Welcoming, even. 

And for most, this is the most terrifying thing of all, because pitch blackness on Alternia should never be welcoming. You'll be haunted by how close you were to pressing on for days. The ones that do go farther are eaten by cave monsters. It's a very effective security system. 

Far beyond that - miles and miles beyond that and down, deep enough for the internal heat of the planet to supply the sweltering climate the Mother Grub needs to live - there is light again. No species save the cave monsters can survive in complete darkness, and especially no trolls. In this complex of catacombs that almost seem to resemble the hives of Earth bees, the near-mythical jade caste lives and works to provide for the Mother Grub. Their lives are defined by routines, based around the strict schedule of care the Mother Grub requires. They are a very isolated caste, with little exposure to the outside world, and instead of having a lusus or hive are brought directly from the trials to begin their training. Despite this - or perhaps because of it, as they cannot know how their existence compares to that of those aboveground - they are a happy caste. The catacombs are never silent, with the sound of laughter and snatches of song echoing off the walls from every direction. 

Porrim Maryam hates it.

No, not the singing, Porrim likes the singing - she has a good voice, and she knows.

But she hates the strictness, the uniformity, the blissful subservience. The lack of curiosity and longing for the world above and the oppressiveness of the low, bleak ceilings. Of course there are other jades who don't want the role they were born into - but they are very few and far between, and none of them ever have the impact on the world that Porrim will when at eight sweeps old she decides she wants to _see the stars._

Right now, though, Porrim's less focused on those stars than she is on being late.

"Sorry I'm late," she says as she opens the door of the supply closet and slips through. "One of the younger girls got lost on the way to the gathering hall and I showed her the way."

"That's kind or adorable," says a voice half-teasingly from the dimness in the back of the room. "You think you're everyone's lusus or something, don't you?"

"Well I wouldn't know what that feels like, now would I?" Porrim maneuvers smoothly through the haphazard boxes and shelves to the farthest wall, where a grinning violetblood girl is perched on a table and swinging her feet. The girl is short and stocky, dressed in a practical sailor uniform, with blunt curving horns and her hair in a bundle or tiny braids. Porrim hops up beside her and the violet kisses her on the cheek. "Hey, Por."

"Evening, babe."

"Damn, is it still evening? Thought it was at least midnight. Don't know how you keep time down here at all."

"Nah, midnight's not for another hour or so. We've got clocks, you know, or you could just look at your husk. That's what I do."

"Wait - if it's not midnight doesn't that mean you have classes or something? Won't you get in trouble for skipping?"

Porrim rolls her eyes. "Yeah...?"

The jadeblood caste is nearly self-sufficient, but they can't produce everything themselves. Four times a sweep, high-tech and high-ranking floating ships come down from the surface to bring supplies and Imperial Drone inspectors. They also bring attractive young troll soldiers serving on the ships and eager to meet members of the fabled jade caste. Porrim enjoys these visits, and not because of the parties they often mean during their weeklong stays.

Larynn Lyapax is almost nine sweeps old, a lieutenant under Commander Carowe, and Porrim's new matesprit. Porrim doesn't know much else about her. They know this is just a fling, and that after Larynn leaves they won't see each other again, and it suits them both just fine. Porrim is used to going through concupiscient quadrantmates as fast and free as she likes, and Larynn hadn't been red with a jade before she arrived and was curious. 

"You're so _troublesome,"_ says Larynn, almost admiring. One hand slides casually onto Porrim's thigh. "I've never seen that in a jade before. I think I like it."

"My caste is obedient. That's our point." She places one hand over Larynn's hand and the other over her collarbone, so she can brush her thumb over the suddenly jumping pulse there.

"But not you?" Larynn purrs half-teasingly. Around her dilated pupils Porrim can see a thin ring of purple that matches the sign on her chest.

"Not me." Porrim leans forward until her black-painted lips are barely an inch from Larynn's own. Larynn glances down, then back up, then her eyes flutter half-closed in anticipation. Porrim smirks.

"Now," she whispers, ghosting her words against Larynn's mouth, "tell me about the stars."

Larynn's gaze changes to an expression of shock, and she gives a surprised giggle and pushes Porrim away. "Really, Maryam?"

Porrim's smirk widens. "You promised!"

"I know! I know I did! Nice timing bringing it up!"

"Shh, keep your voice down. I thought it was."

"If I didn't have a kismesis, Porrim, I'd suggest we try spades because of that. That was a joke, that was a joke! Anyway, what did you want to know about the stars?"

Porrim tries to stay casual, but a new kind of excitement is bubbling up inside her. The stars have been her passion - obsession, almost - for her entire life. But no one in the catacombs has ever seen them, and no one cares enough to imagine how breathtaking they must be. Larynn doesn't understand how lucky she's been to be able to look up and see the expanse of space above her, not a damp rock ceiling, for her entire life. "Oh, anything," says Porrim happily. "Tell me what they look like, tell me how they make you feel when you see them."

Larynn nods. "Okay, um...they're little white lights, against the black sky, and it feels, oh...so much more _open_ than it does down here. I always feel so cramped in your catacombs. Sometimes when it's cloudy or you're in the city they're harder to see, but on really clear nights you can see all the constellations."

Porrim, nestled close into Larynn's side, looks up at that. "Constellations. Tell me about those."

"They're arrangements of stars into shapes of people or animals. But you probably knew that. Here, I can draw you some if you want." Larynn looks around for a piece of paper. "We had to memorize a star chart in naval school."

Porrim can't contain her grin. "Oh, that would be _wonderful!"_

Larynn laughs. "You look like you're getting more from this than from actual nourishment like lunch. What are you, made of space?"

"Sounds about right," Porrim says. She pulls a stick of charcoal out of her sylladex and hands it to Larynn. 

"Thanks. Okay." Larynn spreads the paper she's found in one of the boxes out across her knees. Porrim watches over her shoulder as she draws a scatter of dots and begins to sketch out a pirate ship between them. "This is the Celestial Galleon. According to the legends it was captained by the ancestor of Orphaner Dualscar, back before the Condesce was even a cell in the Mother Grub's slurry..."

The parchment fills up under Larynn's careful strokes of charcoal. She tells the story behind every constellation she can name and some of the ones she can't but knows they're there. Porrim is entranced. "Can I keep this?" she asks when the page is completely filled. It's the first time she's spoken since Larynn began to draw.

"Of course you can - wait, one second." Larynn signs the corner with a flourish and rolls it up to give to Porrim. 

"Thank you." Porrim puts it carefully on the other side of her, placing a hand over it protectively. "Thank you so much, Larynn." Can she feel actual tears trying to come to her eyes? That is ridiculous.

"Don't start crying on me, Por," says Larynn, looking alarmed. "I'm already not used to seeing you so emotional as it is."

"Ugh, yeah, I know. Sorry. Want to make out?"

"I do!" Larynn exclaims delightedly.

Porrim smiles - not a smirk - and kisses her. Larynn kisses back, her fingers working eagerly into Porrim's long curtain of hair. Her lips are cools and firm, so much cooler than Porrim is used to, and it sends a lovely shiver down her spine. Larynn feels it and pulls her closer, until Porrim is almost sitting in her lap.

A beam of white light cuts through the dimness. Larynn and Porrim freeze, listening as the prim footsteps of one of the jade matrons move around the closet. Porrim pushes Larynn away from her and she falls gracelessly off the other side of the table. Porrim swings her legs off the table and brushes down her dress. Her hair is a disaster and she's probably blushing, but there's not a lot she can do about either of those things right now. 

The matron pokes her head around one of the shelves, frowning. "Porrim? What are you doing here?"

"Just checking to make sure we had enough napkins for the feast today, Matron." Porrim keeps her eyes on the floor, trying to disguise her jade-flushed face. There's no doubt that Matron Reneta knows exactly what was going on. Porrim's been walked in on by matrons while doing far worse. 

"That wasn't on the required task list for jades of your ranking, Porrim. Now how about you go and make yourself actually useful by seeing if the third cargo ship needs any help with unloading? It's past the entrance to the trial caverns, the biggest cave on the right."

"Yes, Matron." Porrim sweeps out of the cupboard, not looking back at the table where Larynn has hopefully managed to conceal herself. She's not stupid, she knows where the cargo ships are. They've landed there ever since she was hatched.

The corridors get progressively emptier as Porrim nears the floating docks. More proof that the cargo is already unloaded and being stored away, and Reneta was just trying to get her to stop making out. Larynn often complains that she can't tell one cave from another and loses herself hopelessly without a guide, but Porrim doesn't see how she gets so confused. The caves aren't similar at all - some are thin and some are wide, and they all have different patterns of rock in their walls. It's simple, really.

This one is wide, and it's strange being the only one in it. Porrim looks down both ways as far as she can, making sure she's alone, before beginning to sing. The tune is borrowed from a new song that's very popular with young jades, but Porrim changes the lyrics to make them her own.

"My sylladex is packed and I am surfacebound,  
A machete and a flashlight guide my way,  
And once I leave the pack I am never coming back  
Cause the stars will keep me company night and day.  
Surfacebound, I'm surface-booouund -  
You won't miss me unless I'm found,  
And I won't miss anyone's face, I won't miss this goddamn place,  
Not when I can look to space, I'm surfacebound." 

Three jades sweep around the corner from the trial caverns, and Porrim's mouth snaps shut. They're all deep in giggly conversation with each other, though, and don't seem to have heard her. Porrim waits until they're beyond out of sight before starting on the second improvised verse.

"They say the world outside the caves is beautiful,  
I'm gonna see all that there is to see,  
See the mountains, see the rivers, see the stars that make me shiver  
If you want me, I'm sure that's where I'll be." 

Absorbed in her song, she passes the entrance to the trial caverns without noticing, and her voice echoes loudly back to her. She winces and lowers her voice, glancing down the corridor to make sure she hasn't been heard. A flash of color catches the corner of her eye, and she turns and stops short. The song dies in her throat.

Sitting on one of the squat stalagmites lining the path is a wiggler. His horns are tiny nubs barely visible above a thick nest of hair, and his eyes and carapace are a vibrant, unnatural red. A _mutant_. He can't be much older than a week, and even at that age he's one of the smallest wigglers she's ever seen.

He's staring at her, with those bright cherry eyes that hold no knowledge of the automatic death sentence they mean. There's no trepidation on his small face as Porrim steps hesitantly closer. He's not afraid.

"You should be dead, little one," Porrim murmurs. The wiggler looks up at her blankly. 

Not sure what makes her do it, but without breaking the little mutant's gaze, Porrim sits down slowly on the floor so she's facing the wiggler. "I don't know how you escaped brood quality control, or the trial caverns. No wiggler's ever gotten this far without being caught." She reaches out, and the wiggler gives an excited squeak and crawls onto her hand. He's so tiny, he can curl up almost comfortably in her palm. 

"I should kill you," she muses, as the wiggler walks down her wrist to scoot around on her arm. "It's what we're supposed to do. I've killed mutant wigglers before in the caverns, I have a machete in my strife deck. I could." Even before the words are out of her mouth she feels a surge of revulsion at what she's said. How could she even think of hurting this helpless wiggler? He trusted her enough to reveal himself in the first place, and he's done nothing to deserve death except be born. He'll be culled within hours of Porrim leaving, his red shell all too easy to spot in the muddy rocks by another, less compassionate jade. And he's so sweet, Porrim thinks, watching him poke his nose into the sleeve of her dress. It isn't fair.

There are so many things that aren't _fair._

Porrim swallows and rubs at her eyes. She is not going to cry over some doomed wiggler. No way.

The doomed wiggler looks up at her and chirps, concerned. He doesn't understand much, but he can tell that something is wrong with his new bigtrollfriendlady, and that's not okay. The new bigtrollfriendlady smiles and strokes two fingers through his hair. "I'm fine. Don't worry about me." _Worry about yourself instead_ , she thinks privately. _You'll need it._

The wiggler leans his warm head into her hand, and Porrim feels a rush of fondness for him. She picks him up and places him on her knees so they're face to face. "So what happened? Did you not want to fight in the trials or something, so you wiggled your little way out here until my singing drew you out from the rocks?" He can't answer, but he stares at her earnestly, and Porrim can tell that she's right. There's some special connection between her and this wiggler, one that she hasn't experienced with any other wiggler that's been in her care. He chirps again and nudges at her hand, but leans too far forward and goes tumbling down into her lap.

Porrim laughs. "Everything alright, little one?"

The wiggler's six tiny feet wave comically in the air and he squeaks shrilly in indignation. Still giggling, Porrim gently helps him right side up. He curls up in her lap, a tiny warm mass nested into her stomach, and Porrim realizes he must be exhausted. He's welcome to take a nap in her lap; he deserves it. She resumes stroking his head, almost mesmerized by its silky softness. 

There's something about this wiggler, and not just in the bond she feels between them. He's like nothing Alternia has ever seen before. Yes, he's a mutant, and she doesn't know if Alternia's seen a bright red mutation before, but it's so much more than that, so much beyond just the color of his blood. It might be in his eyes, or in his fearless and trusting manner, or it might just be some bizarre conviction from the depths of Porrim's mind, but this tiny thing holds the potential to change the world. Porrim doesn't know how she knows it, and it's barely even knowledge - more of a strong, wordless intuition - but this wiggler is important. He's going to change the world when he grows up, and in the most wonderful of ways.

But he can't. Because he will be dead.

_Because he's a mutant, Porrim. Mutants die. That's how it's always been._

The wiggler gives a sleepy sigh. He trusts her. He trusted her to keep him safe as soon as he heard her voice echoing through the tunnels and he's going to be mercilessly culled anyways.

That's when Porrim knows.

It clicks together all of a sudden with determined finality. She will not let anyone hurt this wiggler. She will do anything she has to to protect him from death. She finds she has more loyalty to this wiggler than to her entire caste and to the Mother Grub herself, and she's not going to let him be thrown away like a mistake. He's not a mistake. He will change Alternia, and _she will help him do it._

Porrim needs to figure out how to keep the wiggler alive. Could she find a tiny offshoot cave - there's plenty of those - where he could live? He'd outgrow it eventually. Could she smuggle him back to her room and hide him there? People would notice the wiggler noises and her sneaking more food back than usual from the dining hall - not to mention when he pupates, and there's a miniature mutant troll running around.

Then it hits her. He's not going to change the caves when he grows up, he's going to change _Alternia._

She's thought about running away before. Hell, she's made songs about it, but it's never been with any degree of seriousness. She's just never considered it a real option. Any chance to actually _be_ surfacebound she's always assumed would come in the form of the head jades' rare permission to run a surfaceward errand. But - she _could_ , Porrim thinks with a thrill of excitement. Could she?

There's always the cargo ships, they could stow away on board one of those, during the feast when security is lighter. And of course the journey upward through the caves themselves, the route they're supposed to take on one of those elusive surface errands. She's been trained to fight violent lusi along with the rest of her caste; she could take a few cave monsters.

They'll be sure to check the cargo holds before taking off, though. Can she trust Larynn to keep her a secret? No, no way, Larynn is far more loyal to Carowe than to her. Cargo ships are out.

There's so much more to consider when one is actually planning to run away. Porrim's stomach is full of butterflies and her hands feel shaky, even though she hasn't moved from her position on the floor. This is happening, isn't it? This is really happening. 

Abruptly, Porrim stands up. The wiggler startles awake with a soft squeak, and Porrim catches him just before he rolls off her legs straight onto the ground. She raises him solemnly to her face. "I'm going to get you out of here, little one."

The wiggler's face splits into a grin filled with teeth like miniature needles. He chirrups excitedly and his little legs knead on her palms. His bigtrollfriendlady's determination and exhilaration are running through him like a current - big things are happening, he can feel it. Porrim smiles back and gently transfers him to her pocket - one of the many practical and fashionable alterations she's made to this dress. She checks to make sure that he's comfortable (thank goodness she decided to make the pockets this big), and after being reassured by that tiny grin she strides away to her quarters.

Porrim's head is buzzing with the sheer enormity of what she's going to do. It's incredibly difficult to keep her face calm as she makes her way back through the more populated areas of the complex. Surely someone will sense the terror and excitement in her mind and she'll be caught and the wiggler will die? Her emotions are so strong they feel like they're radiating off her in waves. One hand rests lightly over her pocket - _isn't that suspicious too?_ \- but thankfully the wiggler knows to keep still.

Once she's in her room, Porrim heaves a sigh of relief and drops to her knees to scrabble under the dresser for her old felt pack. It's nowhere near big enough, but it'll fit what the sylladex won't.

What do they need? Food, obviously, and water and supplies such as that, but she can steal that from the kitchens and it won't be seen as unusual. Just Porrim being Porrim. Can wigglers eat adult food? She's pretty sure they can.

Porrim moves around the room, searching for the things they need. Into the sylladex go her three most modified dresses, socks and underwear, and her new work boots. The pile of blankets she raided the linen stores for so she and Larynn could cuddle goes in the sack, as does her prized and somewhat contraband sewing kit. She packs a few other essentials - hairbrush, horn file, flashlight, and the like - and, as an afterthought, tosses the black lipstick sitting on her dresser into the sylladex as well. The last time she'd gotten in trouble one of the matrons had been an unnecessary asshole about it so Porrim swiped the lipstick off her desk while she wasn't looking. She hasn't had the chance to try it yet, but black lipstick is an instant confidence booster and makes her look ten sweeps old, so it can't hurt to take. It goes to her strife specibus automatically instead of her sylladex, which is a weird glitch but Porrim is in too much of a hurry to care.

What about her husk? Porrim tosses the grub-like communication device and radio from hand to hand as she debates the pros and cons. She's only connected to like three people and those won't work when she's out of the caves - there's something weird and arbitrary and gross in jade husks that prevents them from connecting to surface husks like Larynn's. It's segregation, honestly. They can also probably track her by the signal so... Porrim drops it on the recuperacoon. Worse than useless.

Should she leave a note for anyone? Larynn, or her on-and-off kismesis, another jade named Seztet? No. Then they'll know she ran. It'll take everyone longer to figure that out if she just leaves. She feels a twinge of regret for abandoning them, but it passes quickly. 

Packing in her room has given Porrim the time she needed to compose herself, and she steps back into the crowd looking like she knows where she's going and is allowed to be going there. The wiggler is either asleep or frozen with terror in her pocket; there's no way to tell now but Porrim hopes it's the former.

The kitchens are even more chaotic than usual with last minute preparations for the midnight feast, so it's easy to get what she needs and get out. She spots Seztet, who loves ratting her out to the head cooks whenever she sees her stealing, and her blood runs cold for a minute but Seztet is too busy chopping potatoes to notice her. Relieved, Porrim slips away, against the flow of traffic all heading towards the main hall.

By the time she reaches the start of one of the unmarked and unobtrusive tunnels to the surface, her palms are sweaty and her heart is beating faster than a brisk walk through the catacombs really calls for. She pulls open her pocket and the tiny wiggler blinks up at her. "Ready for this?"

"Chee," says the wiggler solemnly.

The tunnel isn't guarded. Usually it is, but even the one guard is ridiculous because no one ever tries to go up there. She's mostly on hand to prevent small jades from wandering away and getting eaten, but she's probably at the feast now like everyone else. Porrim ties back her long hair with a ribbon from her sylladex, inhales deeply, and takes her first steps into the dark.

It's a few minutes of walking before she remembers to turn on her flashlight. This darkness is weird, almost hypnotizing. Not a comfortable feeling. She shines the light around a bit - 

\- oh yes that's a cave monster right there in front of her.

Porrim yells and stumbles backwards, frantically trying to access her strife specibus. The monster reads up on the back two of its six legs and hisses. Her specibus opens but it's the _lipstick_ that deploys itself, for god's sake she's facing a giant mutant carnivorous cave salamander with LIPSTICK as her weapon -

The giant mutant carnivorous cave salamander crashes back on all sixes and leaps.

_\- run RUUUUUUUN!!_

Porrim pelts back the way she came, fumbling blindly again for her specibus. In the struggle, the cap to the lipstick falls off, and she almost overbalances with the weight of a fully formed and operational chainsaw in her hands. It vibrates almost eagerly in her grip, like it's been waiting to be used for a long time, its predatory rasping _whirrrrrr_ filling the cave with its echoes. Oh. _Ohhhhhh_. Porrim turns around and swings.

Bringing the lipstick was a _good_ idea. Also, cave monster blood is fluorescent blue. Who knew? She licks her lips, but it's splashed on her face and she gets some in her mouth. _Bluh._

She shines the light into her pocket. "You okay, wiggler?"

The wiggler looks up at his bigtrollguardianfriendlady, liquid red eyes gleaming with tears. Everything was fine in this little dark pouch - he'd almost gone to sleep, even - until there was a yell of _fear_ from what he's come to think of as the most powerful being in existence and then they were running and his bigtrollguardianfriendlady was _afraid_ until the whirring that drilled into his ears and the shaking that shook any remnants of sleepiness away. He's a quiet wiggler normally, but right now he's just barely holding back the screeching of his life.

Porrim's triumphant mood fades as she lifts the wiggler out of her pocket. He's trembling like a leaf, poor thing, and it's a wonder he hasn't started screeching yet. She kisses him on the forehead and cuddles him against her chest, where he hiccups and shakes. "It's alright, dear one. You're safe now. That must have been scary, especially when you couldn't see what was going on. It's okay, though. I've got you."

She holds the him until he stops shaking, before transferring him to the bag. "It's safer here, wiggler. You can hide in the blankets if you're afraid."

After making sure he's secure, Porrim sets off again, quieter this time and sticking close to the wall of the cave. Everything looks blue in the light of her flashlight, the natural stripes of different minerals in the rock cast in odd colors. The passage twists and turns, grows and shrinks - sometimes it's as vast and tall as the gathering hall, sometimes Porrim has to squeeze sideways through the stalagmites or crawl on her belly. The dripping of the water, the patter of monster claws and the echo of Porrim's own footsteps are the only sounds.

The monsters are repulsed by light, she discovers - she thinks it hurts their eyes. They're more likely to skitter out of the way than attack if she shines the light on them from afar, so it's not too hard to keep them at bay. The ones that try to sneak up on her from behind are dispatched with a few swings of the chainsaw before they can do any serious damage.

Even so, Porrim is exhausted and limping by the time she thinks they're a third of the way through. Her chainsaw no longer glows white; it is stained with the multicolored blood of the different monster species. There are two long claw marks stretching from her shoulder almost to her elbow, and though they're not particularly deep they're bleeding a lot. Her left ankle also aches where she tripped over a rock and landed unfortunately. It's long past midnight, and her stomach reminds her with a growl that she hasn't eaten since sunset this evening. And she has no idea how long her tiny charge has been without food.

It's too dangerous to stop in the middle of the passage, though. She forces herself on until the way narrows suddenly, and she can sit just inside the cramped opening and rest. It's easy to defend, and if she needs to run most monsters will be too big to follow.

Porrim lowers herself gingerly to the floor, setting her bag beside her. The wiggler nudges it open with his head, gazes around with wide eyes, and hesitantly crawls up her leg into her lap. He looks up at her and chirps, and Porrim wordlessly hands him a chunk of bread from her sylladex. Delighted, he tears into it with a vigor that suggests it's been far longer than it should have since he's eaten, while Porrim changes the bandages on her wounds.

The whole thing doesn't feel real, somehow. She's still not convinced that this isn't part of some great nonsensical dream, and that she won't jerk awake to another night in the catacombs and just a fading memory of the strange mutant wiggler. In real life jades don't rescue trusting mutants and run away to the surface with them. She still can't believe this is happening, and it's happening because she chose it.

But she's _happy_ , Porrim realizes as she leans against the cave wall and chews on her loaf of bread. She hasn't regretted a single moment of this since she stopped and saw the wiggler. She doesn't remember ever being as scared as she has been since then, either, or as tired, but those feelings pale in comparison to the warm, energizing current of happiness flowing out from her stomach. A lot of the songs they'd sang in the caverns were about home, and how wonderful it feels to be there, often after a long and vague journey. Porrim had never understood the emotions conveyed in these songs before and dismissed them as mindless sentimentality, but now she realizes it's because she's never felt at home in her life. Being around the wiggler feels more like home than the caverns where she'd spent eight sweeps ever had. And even though she knows the real adventure has barely begun, she feels like her whole past life was one long, dull journey to meet the wiggler. 

Porrim frowns as a new thought occurs to her. Most wigglers receive their names right after pupation, as a reward for managing to survive that long. But there's no way she can refer to her wiggler as "her wiggler" until then, assuming they both live that long in the first place. It's unorthodox and unheard of, but then so is every other facet of their situation. Porrim needs to give him a name, and the sooner the better. 

The nameless wiggler scoots down her legs to explore the cave, and Porrim watches him with her chin in her hands. Her mind is blank; she can't think of a single name that might fit him. Names don't have any real meaning, she knows, they're just randomly assigned clusters of letters that make people easier to identify. Wigglers are given the surname of their closest ancestor, but it's widely believed that mutants don't have ancestors. They're leftovers, remnants of the filial slurry that didn't combine quite right. Not than any of them are ever named, anyway.

The wiggler wanders out of arm's reach, and Porrim calls him back with a hissed "little one!". They've rested here long enough, and the more time they spend in one place the more dangerous it will become. Maybe a name will come to her as they walk. She tries to return the wiggler to her bag, but he twists around frantically and clings to her hand with his stubby legs. The bag is hot, and he can't see what's going on and misses his bigtrollguardianfriendlady's presence desperately. Can't he stay out with her? He stares into her eyes imploringly. "Prrrp?"

Porrim smiles and gently pries the wiggler off of her. His legs flail ineffectively at the air and he utters a squeak of distress. "I'm sorry you don't like the bag, wiggler," says Porrim. "But it's far too dangerous for something as small and helpless as you to be out in the open. Understand?"

The wiggler hisses briefly and sinks his teeth into her hand. 

"Ow!" yelps Porrim. The bite hurts worse than she thought it would - wiggler teeth are _sharp_. "Are you trying to convince me you're not helpless? Is that it? Because even your pointy little needle fangs won't do shi - won't do anything against one of those cave monsters. One of _their_ teeth is as big as you are."

The wiggler stares at her with defiance. If he had arms, Porrim is sure they would be crossed. 

She recognizes the face as one she herself often makes at the matrons. Made. "Stubborn little bug," she says fondly. "What if you rode in my pocket with your head poking out so you could see? Would that be good?"

The pout disappears as the wiggler's face melts into that wide, enthusiastic grin. There are tiny traces of jade on the ends of his fangs, Porrim notes with amusement. 

"Ready?" she asks once he's settled himself in the pocket. He coos happily and squirms with anticipation.

That surfacebound song is stuck in Porrim's head again, but she doesn't dare sing it for fear of attracting monsters. She hums it quietly instead, her footsteps keeping the beat. The wiggler stares at her with a rapt expression until she gets bored and stops, and he turns to face backwards and watch the darkness. His warning screeches alert her to several cave monster attacks.

They're a good team, Porrim thinks, wiping neon blue blood off her face for the thousandth time. She scares the monsters away in front of them, he lets her know if they're coming up behind, she has her chainsaw and physical prowess and his best weapon is his as-yet-underdeveloped vocal cords. He's scared, she can tell, eyes wide and uncertain, but so is she and there's not a lot either of them can do about it at this point. It hurts her to see him like this, though. She wishes she could take him out of her pocket and cradle him as close as she can, but there's no way she's leaving him more vulnerable than he already is with his head exposed.

After a few hours of walking, the monster attacks have slowed to almost nothing. _They must be getting smarter_ , Porrim thinks and hopes. _They know not to mess with us now._

Glad of the respite, Porrim deploys the lipstick from her strife specibus and carefully rolls it in her hand. She hasn't had an opportunity to properly look at this wonderful invention yet; she's been too busy killing things with it instead. It's almost identical to the rare white tubes of lipstick the cargo ships sometimes bring and the matrons hog, except for the tiny dial set into its base that her fingers almost glance over in the dark. There are three triangular notches on the dial - black, white, and jade green - and right now it's pointing to white. Porrim puts the flashlight between her teeth and turns it to black with a miniscule click. 

Nothing changes. Porrim uncaps it hesitantly, ready for the weight of the chainsaw as it materializes, but it doesn't come. It's just a tube of ordinary, functional black lipstick now. Porrim grins. That is impressive.

 _What's the jade notch for, then?_ She caps the tube and twists the dial. The black lipstick slides down, and a stick of jade slides up in its place. Porrim's grin widens. _Two colors!_ This is the best thing she's ever decided to steal, hands down.

She takes the flashlight out of her teeth, wipes her mouth on her sleeve, and applies a coat of jade to her lips. If only she had a mirror - she must look like one of the legendary rainbow drinkers from the horror stories she told the younger jades when they were all supposed to be asleep.

Porrim glances down at the wiggler, who is staring up at her in silence, and gives him a fangy smile. He quickly smiles back. She playfully swipes the lipstick at his face too, and he giggles and bats it away, but not before she leaves a sticky green smudge on his nose. Still giggling, he rubs at it with a paw and tries to put the paw in his mouth, before Porrim wipes it off with her thumb. "Not for eating. Just playing."

Finally, Porrim turns her attention back to the lipstick, caps it and twists it to white. Interestingly, the jade stick inside doesn't change, but once she uncaps it again the chainsaw springs hungrily into existence in her hands. Chainsaws are a fairly new invention, and she's never used one at all before now, let alone to strife with. It's heavier than it looks and unwieldy as a two-handed weapon, but it certainly gets the job done... Carefully, Porrim flips the power switch to off - it comes out ready for battle - and lifts the dangerous part, which she's only seen as a blur so far, up to inspect. It's sort of like a saw blade, which she's used to, but set on a conveyor belt system that apparently rotates at very high speeds... Porrim drags one of the blades' edges across her finger to test for sharpness. Hot _damn_. Even her freshly sharpened machete doesn't compare to this. Forget cave monsters, this thing could probably cut through solid rock if she forces it enough. Not that she wants to do that - it would be far too loud and the vibrations it sent up her arms might dislocate her shoulder or something. But she could. And that knowledge makes her feel very powerful.

Porrim caps the chainsaw and returns it to her specibus. The wiggler shifts in her pocket, and she looks down to see he's tucked his head in. Maybe he's gone to sleep. That would be good - it's been an exhausting night for both of them, and she wishes she could join him. Her feet ache within her scuffed and muddy work boots, and her wounds have started to throb again. How long have they been walking? How much ground have they covered? Porrim estimates between four and six hours, but she has no idea how far that puts them from the surface. It's gotten colder, too, and her thin dress provides little protection against the sudden gust of wind that makes her shiver.

Wait. Wind doesn't happen in caves unless it's from a thermal vent. And this wind is anything but thermal. 

"Wiggler!" she whispers. At the sound of her voice, the wiggler lifts his head blearily into the open. _"We're close! We're so close!"_

He gives a happy chirp at her excitement and waves his stubby forelegs. Impulsively, Porrim pulls him out of her pocket and sits him on her shoulder. He's the reason she's up here in the first place, they should at least see the outside at the same time. See the stars. _The stars._

 _They're almost in her reach_. After so long. Porrim's aching feet are forgotten and she has to restrain herself from running or skipping or dancing to the end of the path. This is the most excited she's ever been in her life - she could probably add up all the times she's ever felt excited and it still wouldn't compare to this. Her stomach is doing cartwheels and her palms are slick with sweat, but her mouth is pulling up at the corners of its own accord and she doesn't suppress the goofy smile that stretches across her features. She wonders what the sky will be like. Will it be clear? Cloudy? Will the moons shine bright or will one of them wane? (The green one never wanes, she remembers some fling from last sweep saying. No one knows why.) Will she recognize all the constellations that Larynn taught her? She begins to name them all off in her head, just to see how many she can get. _Gatren the Mariner, Dranti the Mirthless, Sedam the Minotaur, the First Lusus, the Virgin Mother Grub, Ilanii the Scorpion..._ On her shoulder, the wiggler fidgets. His guardian is agitated, but not afraid, and her steps are fast and long. It makes it harder to hold on, but he's glad to be here and out of the pocket.

They round one final corner, and the wiggler sees light - lots of little lights, little white speckles, in the distance. His guardian utters a soft gasp and breaks into a trot.

It's still too slow. Porrim can see the stars and the outside and the surface but it's too far away and she can't take it anymore. Porrim snatches the wiggler off her shoulder, holds him tight to her chest and runs.

The ground is uneven under her feet and twists up awkwardly, and Porrim has to scramble up a rockfall that doesn't look quite natural before squeezing through a gap between stalactites. The path to the caverns isn't meant to be conspicuous. Porrim pops out into the open like a cork from a bottle, stumbling eagerly down the steep, jagged slope and jumping the last few feet to the ground. Her feet slip slightly as she lands -there's sand below them. There's sand as far as she can see, Porrim notices with a swooping sensation in her stomach almost like vertigo. The horizon is so far away, and so empty. The cave must have come out in the desert.

The stars are above her. _The stars are above her._ The stars are above her, and around her and inside her and she's never felt more ecstatic in her life. She whoops with joy and whirls around and around, lifting the wiggler high in the air so he looks like he's soaring through space. He laughs and waves his tiny paws and Porrim laughs back, a laugh of unrestrained triumph and jubilation. She's so happy to be out of the caves, and not just because she can see properly and doesn't have to worry about the monsters. She'd yearned for this before but now she knows for sure - this is where she belongs, out in the open world and not trapped underground, color of her blood be damned. Caste roles be damned! Hemospectrum be damned! Damn this whole unfair system!! Exhilarated by this wildly illegal thought, Porrim jumps and twirls in the air. They dance and laugh and shout until Porrim is too dizzy to continue, and the wheeling heavens slow to a stop above their heads.

The wiggler nuzzles under her chin, Porrim tilts her face up so he can rest his head there, and gets her first look at the full, unblurred sky.

The smile slips from her face, and a thick silence floods her ears. Her mouth hangs slightly open. She's not breathing.

Porrim's knees are water and she stumbles backwards, before sitting down heavily and lying on her back in the sand. Her mind couldn't be further from the wiggler right now, but he manages to cling to her dress for the ride.

There's not a cloud in sight. There's absolutely nothing to block her view of the stars. It's the most mindblowing thing she's ever seen.

There are so _many,_ so many more than she ever imagined. The constellation stars shine bright, she recognizes them with ease, but she doesn't comprehend how long ago astronomers could have looked into this otherworldly sea of infinite fascination and thought it was possible to fit the stars themselves into stunted, inadequate troll-defined shapes. Stars, some bright and some pinpricks, some far apart and some clustered together, dot across almost all of the sky she can see, utterly heedless of the template of the constellations. It's as if some divine hand has thrown shining silver glitter across the cosmos, not as if an artist has painted a meticulous connect-the-dots.

And even as she realizes that these constellations are far from the organizational system of the sky they speak to her. She can trace them from one star to the other and visualize what each represents, she can feel how they weave in with Alternia's mythology and its long, long history. Early trolls saw the stars and they poured so much of their world into them that eventually in the stars they saw themselves. The stars were a constant - in those days, and Porrim felt in her new life as well, they were more or less the _only_ constant - and people took comfort in the fact that some things would always be the same. They knew that there was always something, whether it was the personas they'd assigned to the stars or the deep and unfathomable gaze of the universe itself, watching over them.

Porrim doesn't know how long she's been laying on the ground. She doesn't know how long these half formed thoughts have been running through her. Time doesn't apply to space, just as space does not apply to time. Space keeps going. Space remains the same. There is space in Porrim's eyes and Porrim's veins, in the ground beneath her and the air above her and with every breath she takes she breathes in its essence. Larynn was right. She is made of space.

Beside her, the wiggler has trundled off her chest and is nudging at her hand. She picks him up without looking and flips him over so he can comfortably watch the night sky too. He obediently stills and she cards her fingers through his silky hair. The boy still needs a name, and she thinks she knows what to give him. Escaping the caves is nearly as big an achievement as pupating, isn't it?

Ancric the Crab is a ten-star constellation, from the wiggler's tale of a crab who through great wit and courage escapes the boiling pot at the last second, but wears a bright red shell for the rest of her life because of it. Porrim shifts a letter and changes some others, and rolls the result around in her mouth to see how it feels. "Kan-kri. Kannnnnkriiii." The hard K's fit him, and they're complemented perfectly by the gentle sophistication of the other syllables. It'll be a good first name, but the surname... Porrim searches the sky for a suitable namesake. How about...

She remembers that feeling - almost _vision_ \- back in the caves, that this wiggler would grow up to change all of Alternia. Yes.

The Seventam, an Old Alternian word for earthquake. Legend told that many, many sweeps ago a great quake had swept the planet, forming the mountains and the deep underwater trenches where the fiercest seadwellers and their lusi now build their citadels. The Seventam's constellation is the only non-troll constellation with an honorific "the" and eight-letter title, and it looked like a spiraling fracture in the sky. A V, both hard and soft, would be the best fit for his surname to begin with, and a sloppy Alternian M looks almost like an S ("Porris Saryas? Is there a Porris Saryas here who could come claim this paper?"), so... Vantas. Kankri Vantas.

"Kankri Vantas," Porrim murmurs.

Kankri chirrups. He doesn't understand the garble of noise that flows triumphantly off his guardian's tongue, but he likes the way it sounds. 

"Glad that's settled. Hey Kankri. Little one. You see that star right there?" Porrim points up, and Kankri cranes his head. "That one that looks all orangeish? That's really because it's a massive ball of superheated plasma at a different stage of life than most of the others. But what people _say_ is that it's like that because it used to be a brownblooded troll, before a pirate enchanter fell in love with her..."

They lie like that, Porrim and Kankri, the First Mother and the Earthshaker, the Dolorosa and the Signless Sufferer, watching the stars on the warm sand in the cold night until the sun comes up and the dawn chases all those stars away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((And yes you can probably tell what song I based Porrim's surfacebound song off shhhh it fits))


	2. Metamorphosis at the Market

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Most of the stories like to portray the Dolorosa as imposing, confident and strong from day one. But people don't just start out like that.

When Porrim wakes up on the surface, she knows it's the surface and not the caves, even in those first moments between asleep and awake where everything is slow and muddled. There's just no way to mistake this place for underground, not with the cool night wind rustling through the threadbare curtains of the open window, or the distant creaks of the inn's wood floorboards as other trolls in the rooms around her get up to begin their nights, or a small mutant grub sitting on top of the recuperacoon and SCREECHING AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS FOR FOOD. 

Porrim vaults out of the coon, drenching Kankri with sopor slime as she splashes to her feet. _Dammit, he's not supposed to touch that until pupation!_ She snatches him up hurriedly, cursing under her breath, as the slime sluices off of her down a drain in the floor. Kankri sucks in a deep breath, and Porrim flips frantically through her sylladex and finds the last piece of bread before he can start up his earsplitting _shreek-shreek-shreek_ ing noise again. 

Contented, Kankri sinks his teeth into his breakfast, and Porrim sighs and plops him down in the room's only chair. She hopes no one heard the racket he'd been making for who knows how long before she woke up. There's no way, right? The walls are solid mud brick, and there's no glass in the window but they're on the second floor. Her heart is still pounding with adrenaline as she deploys a dress from her sylladex and slides it over her head. She cleans Kankri off the best she can with the hem as he squeaks and wiggles in protest. 

They've been staying in this small inn on the desert edge of a village called Sandstown for the past two nights. In her ecstasy at seeing the stars when they'd first reached the surface, she'd somehow managed to forget that the desert was plagued by the undead during the daylight hours. Her chainsaw could cleave through their sawdusty corpses like ripping paper, but it's still a wonder that she survived the hour-long flight to a town she didn't know existed until she saw it on the horizon. Thankfully, she had the foresight to return Kankri to the bag, and he spent the journey securely bundled in a blanket nest as she struggled into town under a sun that blazed but didn't blister as it would have other trolls. 

Her only salvation was that other jades must have come through this village before her, possibly staying in this very inn. If they heard a pounding on their door in the middle of the day, any other desert innkeeper would have barred it and added a furniture blockade just to be on the safe side, but not this one. He'd told Porrim his name, which she promptly forgot due to being too exhausted and dusty to properly focus on anything. Now she's less exhausted and less dusty, after two days’ sleep and a long shower, but she still doesn't know and honestly doesn't care either. 

Her stomach growls, the first of many reminders of her hunger, and Porrim remembers that she gave Kankri the last of the food. There's no way around it. They'll have to go into town today. 

Porrim sighs. She's been avoiding the thought of it. The fact is, despite all she's done so far, despite her bravery and bravado in everything from leaving the caves to killing zombies with a chainsaw, she has no idea how anything on the surface actually works. There's no one here to teach her, and her closest companion is a cull-on-sight wiggler with no concept of object permanence yet, let alone fugitivity from the law. But she has to be completely self-sufficient now; she has no choice. Not only for herself but for him too. It’s a lot for a sheltered eight-sweep-old to take in. And it’s hard to get up every three hours and feed him, it’s hard to live with the constant mantle of fear on her shoulders that he’ll screech too loud or poke his head into the open at the wrong time and she’ll be arrested and he’ll be paint, it’s hard to realize that there is no system in place to control her - or to stop her from starving to death if she doesn’t get up and _do something about it._

It’s scary, and she’s terrified, and he’s terrified too, but it’s better than the caves. That’s absurd. It’s an absurd statement. But it’s true and she wouldn’t trade this for the world.

Kankri squeaks loudly at her, and she looks over to see that he’s dropped his bread off of the chair. She smiles and puts it back in front of him, only for him to bat it right back off with a chirpy half-giggle. Porrim’s smile turns into a fond smirk. _Dorky little bug._

They play the bread game for a few minutes, until Kankri abruptly loses interest and swallows the piece in three bites. Porrim ruffles his hair and walks over to the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, twirling a bit and watching the fabric of her dress swish around her legs. This is her favorite dress, and second most modified - it clings subtly to her midriff and then sweeps out in a way that makes her look stately and mature, and jade embroidery patterns born of boredom snake like vines around the hems. All of her dresses were cut with the same uniform austerity, which infuriates her to no end, but spare fabric in the caverns was incredibly difficult to come by and she never scrounged up enough to do anything significant about that. She’s made up for it in other ways, though, like the deep pockets and the black and jade designs she’s intertwined with the jagged spike motif down the shoulders and arms. Changes to the dresses were _technically_ forbidden, which was why she had to keep her sewing kit hidden, but it wasn’t like they’d take them from you once you’d done it, so she’d done it a lot. (And now she can do it however much she wants, without any fear of reprimands. Freedom is really weird to get used to.)

Porrim looks back up at her face and sighs. It’s a lovely dress, but even with the addition of her trusty lipstick the whole look is still a little bit...well, eight sweeps old. She unties her ponytail and lets her hair fall free around her face. That’s better. She’s no imposing jade matron but she’s not helpless either. And her natural expression of nervous disgruntledness could probably pass for being aloof. She has that kind of face.

Satisfied, Porrim turns away and scoops Kankri into the air. “We’re about to go on another adventure!” she cooes. “Is that exciting, or what?”

Kankri doesn’t understand the meaning of what his guardian is saying, but he returns her smile with an enthusiastic grin of his own. As long as he doesn’t have to sit in the bag again, he’s up for anything his guardian is.

His chirp of agreement turns to an enraged squawk as his guardian makes him do exactly that. She murmurs to him reassuringly, but as the bag closes over his head he resolves not to be reassured and instead chew a hole in the layer of fabric she’s piled over him. It smells of her, though, and he makes a nest for himself before pulling a corner into his mouth.

Porrim feels guilty for putting Kankri back in the sack, but there’s simply nowhere else that is safer for him to be. She hopes he understood her words about it only being until his pupation, when his mutant blood color won’t be as immediately evident. But then again, she has no idea when wigglers are supposed to start learning language comprehension, and he has no idea what pupation even is. So that was useless. Poor Kankri, stuffed in a bag with no knowledge of why he has to be there. She’s going to have to see if she can find a basket or something with holes he can peer out of.

Porrim pulls on her boots and locks the room securely behind her. There’s no one in the hallway with her, except for an elderly rustblood who scurries back in his room before she can wave good morning. She shrugs and jogs downstairs.

Outside, sporadic clouds drift across the starry sky, and a chill breeze blows Porrim’s hair back from her face. The streets are bare for the most part - not many people live on the outskirts of town this close to desert zombie country - but the trolls Porrim does see all stop their business to look at her. 

Porrim is startled, but she glares back belligerently and they all drop their gazes before long. Jade are uncommon, she knows that much, and especially in tiny towns like these they never stay long. The villagers must have been just trying to get a glimpse of the oddity in their midst.

Porrim gives their backs one last scowl before settling her bag tighter against her and setting out towards what the signpost outside the inn says is the market. She can feel eyes upon her as she walks, and she prays that it’s because of her caste and not Kankri doing something conspicuous in the bag. Or - the idea grips her with sudden dismay - her clothes being ridiculously out of style. She feels an unfamiliar prickle of self-consciousness. In the caves, everyone wore the same thing so there was no concept of fashion except the one Porrim borrowed from the supply ships, but up here who knows?

The streets are beginning to get more populated, she notices. Trolls pass her from all directions, heading to their hives or...whatever trolls do for a living. A few rickety stands have sprung up on the side of the road, most of them advertising food. Porrim absently takes an apple off of one as she passes.

“Hey! Are you planning to pay for that, or what?!” comes an immediate shout from behind her. 

Porrim freezes, the apple halfway to her mouth. Ohgod _money._

She’d known that it’s a _thing_ , of course, but she’d completely forgotten that she’d need any. In the caverns everything was provided for you, and there was an impromptu barter system for when you wanted something someone else had, so there was no reason to have money at all. She isn’t even sure what money looks like. Hesitantly, she turns around, ready to… she doesn’t know what. Threaten the shopkeeper, in all honesty.

The shopkeeper, a goldblooded boy who can’t be much older than six, sits down heavily on his stool. He looks like he’s trying very hard not to run away or wet himself. “I...I didn’t mean no - _any_ \- disrespect, I - no change for you, ma’am, of course.”

Porrim blinks. “I don’t - “

“No problem. Just take it. It’s fine. Sorry for shouting.”

“R..right.” Porrim nods and bites thoughtfully into the apple. This weird people-being-scared-of-her thing could work to her advantage.

Within fifteen minutes, Porrim sloppily intimidates her way to the town’s seedy-looking pawn shop, run by a graying olive who looks equally seedy until he sees the jade on her dress. He becomes almost subservient after that, and positively subservient when she pulls a spare dress from her sylladex and places it on the table between them.

Hesitant, like he’s afraid she’s going to spring forward and slice off his hand, the man grabs the dress. “What is this fabric? I haven’t seen anything like it in my life. And the thread patterns - where did you get it?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” says Porrim, and gives him a tight, steely smile.

He visibly _deflates_ , and Porrim’s confidence grows.

“Of course not. Of course not. It’s in very good shape, as well, ma’am, so I can give you one hundred fifty boons.”

Porrim has absolutely no idea how much value that is, but instinct tells her to wait. She lets the last traces of the smile leave her face, just to see what he does.

“Two hundred,” he amends hurriedly. “For you. Two hundred boons.”

“Thank you,” says Porrim, and takes the twenty small rectangular plaques he offers. They’re marbled red, rust and fuschia, with the words _Ten Alternian Boons_ inscribed in gold leaf on one side and a portrait of Her Imperious Condescension on the other. Each boon is the size of her two longest fingers pressed together, but much thinner. She slides them into her pocket, where they clatter cheeringly as she moves, and sweeps out of the store.

Porrim walks back to the market, enjoying the sight of people moving out of her path before she crosses theirs. She looks around at the booths set up by the road as she goes, trying to figure out how much money she’s actually holding in her pocket right now. Two hundred boons could buy one hundred and fifty loaves of bread, she discovers. Or four hundred apples.

The market lies in the corner of town closest to the river, where the rest of the village seems to have sprung up around it. The river surprises Porrim, and she has to take a minute to make sense of the rippling dark thing in the distance when she sees it. She didn’t catch even a glimpse of it when she was out in the desert - then again, she’d been preoccupied - and her inn is as far from it as you can get. She can’t see anything of the tiny harbor from where she is, just the ends of a few masts poking above the hustle and bustle of the market itself.

Hustle and bustle is relative. The kitchens in the caverns were more hustling and bustling than this. Still, Porrim stops for a moment, not noticing or caring that she’s in the middle of the path. The scant crowd of marketgoers dodge around and in front of her, and trade irritated looks with their neighbors, as Porrim takes it in.

It’s not, physically, a big market. The largest hall of the underground jade caverns puts it far to shame. What Porrim’s not used to, and what she doesn’t understand, is how so much chaos can exist in one place, and how that chaos seems to almost exist in an organized fashion. There are shops in actual buildings lining the market square - truthfully more of a half-circle, with the harbor serving as its flat end - with streets between them that lead off to other parts of the town like spokes of a broken wheel. Porrim can see four spokes from where she’s standing.

The half-circle itself, at first glance, is the bright loud picture of mayhem and confusion. Its loose clusters of shops, booths and stands, from ramshackle and dirty to garishly painted imitations of opulence, follow no kind of organization that Porrim’s ever seen. Lowbloods sporting every imaginable lowblood color rush and mingle like insects in a burrow, and the air is crowded with noise; the shouts of sellers advertising their wares rising above the wordless clamor of many people gathered in the same space at once. But slowly, as she continues to stare, Porrim begins to pick out signs of order from the seeming chaos. The clusters form two roughly parallel curved lines, arching away from the harbor. It’s very obviously set up in a way that caters to those that come from the river - and with good reason, Porrim thinks, because she can see glimpses of teal and cobalt cloaks over there as the crowds part away from their owners. Only a caste or two above her own, but vastly above most of the population of this town.

Porrim ducks into an alley to check on Kankri before descending into the clamor. She finds him at the bottom of the bag, snuggled in a nest he’s made from part of a spare dress. He blinks up at her, chirping sleepily.

“Just checking up on you,” she smiles, and closes the bag again. She feels guilty for not paying him any more attention. Hopefully they’ll be able to find some privacy after she’s done shopping, so he can get out and stretch his legs.

Porrim swings the bag lightly onto her back, takes a deep breath to steel herself, and steps out into the chaos.

The noise is the first thing. Jades are quiet, apparently, because the rest of trollkind definitely isn’t. Everyone is _shouting_. Merchants shout at her and other trolls to _look here hey mister the finest only three boons,_ customers shout at merchants that _you’re overcharging do you have that in brown I won’t go lower than six,_ trolls shout at each other to _watch it quit pushing move your crapblood ass before I move it for you_. It’s overwhelming. Porrim asks a nearby booth owner for directions, he happily shouts them back for a boon, and she makes it to the relatively expansive grocer’s stall having only stepped in hoofbeast leaving once.

From there she goes to the bakery, which she can almost smell above the scent of harbor and trollkind that pervades the market, and then to the tiny butcher’s shop. Kankri can’t eat meat yet, but Porrim’s always been somewhat of a carnivore. And food doesn’t really spoil in sylladexes, although it does kind of take up a lot of space. She wasn’t sure how far the boons from the dress would take her, but apparently two hundred boons is a _lot_ of money. She buys all the supplies they need and a proper pack and a really nice sewing kit that won’t get confiscated on sight, and still has one hundred and three boons left over. The booth owner had wildly overcharged her for directions. 

One hundred three boons to her name. The only question now is what to do with them. Porrim heads back to the inn, feeds Kankri lunch, and considers her options.

“I could save it,” she says to Kankri, sitting cross-legged on their floor and watching him chew resolutely on an apple. “But what am I saving it for? And I feel like that much isn’t really safe to be carrying around with me, you know?”

Kankri doesn’t know. He knows that he likes apples. He also remembers chewing on the dress, and wonders if she’s noticed it yet.

“I’ll just buy something in the market, probably. That won’t be too hard. Clothes, maybe? I’m starting to get the impression that this old thing is completely out of style.” She picks idly at a loose thread on her dress. “Dunno what the style for jades is, though…God, Kankri, I sound like an airheaded eight-sweep-old.” She laughs. “People are kinda scared of me though, because of my caste, which is bizarre. The violets never acted like that. You have literally no idea what I’m saying.”

Kankri doesn’t. He licks his lips and is delighted to find that his face tastes like apple.

“But I need to talk to you, so you can start learning to understand me, even if you can’t talk back yet. You done with that?”

She tries to take the apple from him, and Kankri squeaks indignantly until she puts it down. He’s not done yet, just enjoying the discovery that his paws taste like apple too.

“Okay, take your time. Hey check it out - this pack I got has a pocket especially for you.”

Kankri eats, and Porrim transfers the contents of her old pack to the new one. This pack is slightly bigger, with more pockets, kind of ugly but it’s nothing a bit of tailoring won’t fix. It’s all going well until she pulls out her last dress and sees that it looks like it’s been attacked by a hungry, wiggler-sized moth.

“Oh, _Kankri!_ Look what you did!”

Kankri shrinks back, looking at her over his apple core with wide eyes. She’s mad at him. She hasn’t been that before.

“Ugh, just - just don’t do it again, okay? Now I’m gonna have to get some fabric or something so I can patch it up later.” Porrim stuffs the dress into the bottom of the bag. She’s suddenly infinitely more glad that this new pack has a separate pocket for her hungry little wiggler.

“C’mere, bug. We’re gonna head back out to the market for a few hours and I might try and find a dress that isn’t boring or chewed on. Then...I guess we’ll come back here?” They can’t change the world in Sandstown, and Porrim is getting restless with the relative idleness. They should move on, go _somewhere,_ see the rest of the surface like Porrim dreamed, before the gossip about the bizarrely young jade who talks to herself in her room gets too suspicious, but Porrim can’t think how to make that happen. Running away with a mutant grub seems easier when you’re not in the middle of it.

Porrim grabs Kankri and sets him in the bag. She’ll worry about what to do next later.

The market isn’t as loud as she remembers, or as crowded. Maybe some trolls have gone home or a ship has left the harbor. Maybe she was just overwhelmed earlier; even violet parties weren’t as chaotic as this. Porrim wanders, and before long her fingers ache from pricking them to show shopkeepers what color of things she is permitted to buy. Her purchases include black and green fabric, probably entirely too much makeup but who’s going to stop her now, and a pair of lovely high heeled boots that she doesn’t trip in once as she clicks across the uneven sandstone cobbles.

The latter aren’t as irresponsible of a purchase as they seem. They were allowed one pair of high heels in the caves, for various ceremonies and other formal occasions. Once Seztet had dared her to go into a training session for fighting violent and rogue lusi with them and Porrim, famous for never turning down a dare, had. Seztet didn’t ever find out that in the half perigee or so in between the dare and the deed Porrim had been training furiously to fight, run and climb in the shoes, and walked away from the simulated lusus combat without a scratch on her. So she’s pretty confident now in her ability to handle any situation that might come her way in them.

And sixty-five boons to go. Porrim glances at the sky. She’s got a good few hours of darkness before it’s too dangerous to keep the market open anymore. There’s a couple of rustbloods congregated around the front of one of the physical buildings bordering the square, staring at the mannequins inside. Ooh, a dress shop. Porrim darts in.

“What’s your caste?” asks the bored-looking but cute shop girl leaning against the counter. She can see the jade on her dress, but sellers of fabric or dye especially have to check. Impersonating another caste can get you in serious trouble. And for all she knows, Porrim could be the lowblood quadrantmate of a jade, allowed to wear accents of their colors.

She pricks her finger with the little knife resting on the counter and shows it to the girl. She blinks, appearing less bored, then turns and motions her into the shop. “I’m not sure what we have in stock for jade, but I hope it’ll be to your liking.”

The jade section is a single shelf in the corner of the store with a few musty dresses neatly folded on it. Porrim wrinkles her nose as she looks through them. _Ruffles, some sort of lacy cardigan, and ew - a_ crinoline. They’re all designed for the sort of stuffy jade matron that always actually gets the surface assignments. Porrim turns to leave, the least abhorrent dress under her arm. A flash of green catches her eye, and that’s when she sees it.

The dress is displayed on a mannequin, set slightly off to the side. It’s like no dress Porrim’s ever seen, even on the highest of high jades or the vainest violet captains, and it’s magnificent.

The skirts aren’t puffy, or boringly slack like the dresses from the caves. They’re long, long enough that without her heels it would trail on the ground but probably in a cool way, and striped with long, vibrant lines of jade from waist to ankle - except for the front, which cuts open to show a criscrossing pattern of fabric that Porrim adores the odd ingenuity of. Although the skirts’ flare is gradual, the torso slims in significantly, accented by a simple jade-edged sash.

The same peculiar stylized spikes that are on her cavern dresses snake down across her shoulders and chest, but outlined in jade that is proud and bright, instead of the dull color used underground that reeks of humble subservience. The collar rises high and stiff, almost to the mannequin’s chin - a sign of status from the caves, and Porrim suspects intimidation up here. The shoulders point out almost impractically, curving upward at the tips, an unusual extension of the spike motif. A light green cape, made of some shimmery translucent material, flows out from the base of the chestpiece to flutter gently in the wind of Porrim’s movement. 

For the first time on the surface, Porrim knows what it's like to actually _want_ something physical. She catches the shopkeeper’s arm and points. “That dress. How much is it?”

“Madam, that dress is display only. I apologize.”

“How much do you want for it.” Porrim pulls a handful of boons from her sylladex.

The shopkeeper steps back. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I really can’t take - “

Suddenly Porrim has an idea. Remembering the pawn shop man’s reaction to her offer, she reaches into her bag and triumphantly pulls out the dress that Kankri didn't damage. “Can you take this?”

The girl looks skeptical at first, but as she shakes it out to display it fully her eyes go wide. She stammers her acceptance, taking the dress from Porrim as Porrim gratefully slides the masterpiece off the mannequin to go find someplace to change. (It’s amazing and she wants it on her body as soon as physically possible.)

With her new heeled boots, effortless-looking makeup and terrifyingly gorgeous dress, Porrim feels like a new person. Her head is higher, her strides are longer, and she moves like where she’s going is where she’s supposed to be. As she walks - _sweeps_ \- through the market, she notices something strange in the behavior of the trolls around her. Before, she was stared at and revered because of her caste alone. Now, wide-eyed trolls whisper behind their hands, dive out of her path like she’ll impale them on her heels if they don’t, some actually stop moving to gaze at her. It’s not even just warmbloods. She’s seen a few teals and cobalts as she ends up nearer to the harbor, and whether consciously or unconsciously they all show her some similar measure of respect and awe.

Porrim smiles, half out of disbelief. Now they’re actually, genuinely intimidated. By the eight sweep old with an illegal wiggler in her pack and two nights’ worth of experience on the surface. It’s a disconcerting feeling, but a powerful one, and Porrim thinks she could get used to this.

But even though her outside is every part the confident and intimidating jade mystery, on the inside she’s still the girl who’s literally lived under a rock her whole life and has no idea what to do next. One thing’s for sure - they’re getting out of Sandstown ( _Sandstown._ If less original names for things exist Porrim doesn’t want to hear them), possibly tonight. Possibly on a boat. Despite how scary of a prospect that is.

By the time she takes a fidgety Kankri back to the inn and they finish a supper that’s somewhat of a feast, she has a plan. It will be a boat. She’s going to go down to the harbor and find a ship that takes passengers and is bound somewhere with more of a population. Failing that, she’ll intimidate her way on one. Failing that, she’ll bribe. She’s fairly confident in her abilities to do both. Kankri is a lot more cheerful than he was a few hours ago, chirping away in his vaguely insectile little pseudolanguage and giggling at nothing. Porrim wonders if he managed a nap in that time, and feels another stab of guilt for not being to pay him more attention. Maybe she can get them a private cabin in the ship; then he won’t have to stay hidden so much.

She packs up their stuff and they head to the harbor. It’s easy enough to find, even if no one would dare overcharge Porrim for directions now. Through a combination of arched eyebrows, glares, and boons, she buys them a tiny cabin on board the _Cobweb_ , a small merchant ship headed for what the cerulean first mate calls “the biggest port this side of Seadweller Rift.” Whatever that means. When Porrim gets to this city, she really needs to buy a map.

She should be excited, or at least nervous, she thinks as she slides the porthole shut to block the first rays of sun peeking over the horizon. Kankri is; she can tell by the way he’s clambering over every part of the cabin and emitting snuffly little squeaks as he goes. But the only thing she feels, besides slightly unsteady on her feet, is tired. This has easily been the most - no, second most eventful day of her life. She has a feeling a lot of days are going to be like that, now. She makes Kankri a nest out of blankets, sings him a lullaby to the rhythm of the rocking of the boat, and means to make it back to her recuperacoon but these blankets are soft and he’s purring against her and she really can’t...keep her eyes open...

She falls asleep on the floor, curled around Kankri, as the waves take them farther and farther away from the beginning of their long journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't have an outline for this chapter, which NEVER happens, but I was experimenting and as a result I think this chapter might be paced kinda weirdly? If you'd let me know what you think, that'd be great!! :)


	3. Purple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a very few stories, she was said to be able to glow. In some stories, she was called a huntress, not unlike the Disciple. In many stories, it was she who always was mentioned as taking care of the bodies the Signless's inner circle left in its wake. In most stories, she had great strength and speed, greater than those of a normal troll. In all the stories and all the paintings, the Dolorosa had bright, shining yellow eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :^)
> 
> ((trigger warnings at the bottom))

Porrim crouches against the blunt rock of the canyon wall, breath coming fast and shallow and eyes darting around for any sign of movement. Kankri squirms in her too-tight embrace, whining faintly from his bag, and she hisses an urgent _“hush”_ against the side of his head. She can no longer hear footsteps stalking through the canyons’ maze of cliffs and rock formations, but whether that means she’s lost her pursuer or he’s just waiting for the right moment she doesn’t know. Every muscle in her body tense, ready to run or ready to fight the moment he makes his move, Porrim waits.

It’s been nearly a sweep since runaway and mutant boarded the merchant ship _Cobweb_ and left the desert far behind, but to Porrim, it seems like so much more. Through that time Kankri has been growing nonstop, now almost the length of her forearm and hand, and she can tell by the way he scratches at his skin like it’s too small for him that his pupation is just around the corner. 

Officially, they have been fugitives for over half a sweep now. The notices and crude posters went up almost a perigee after Sandstown, and life had gotten considerably harder for the two of them for a while. But interesting criminals are only interesting for so long, especially if they’ve done nothing to impact the surfacedwellers in any way, and the Alternian justice system has bigger and more dangerous outlaws to focus their power on. They survived, moving discreetly through caravans and hostels big enough to keep their anonymity. Sometimes, said caravans or hostels would be headed by the very outlaws Alternia had deemed more important than her. Those times were always a welcome respite, with Kankri able to stretch his legs and meet new people, and Porrim learning through bitter stories of injustice and terror that unlike in the caves, she is not the only rebel.

In time, Alternia moved on, and the wanted posters with the flyaway hair and too-small nose were plastered over by new, scarier, more importantly wanted faces. Porrim could show her face again. Or, she’d thought as much. 

They warned her about bounty hunters. The bored and ruthless, or poor and ruthless, trolls who don’t dress as soldiers but can be just as effective at dispatching criminals. Poor and ruthless means desperate, but bored and ruthless means highblood. And the ones that don’t need the money tend to go after the faces on the older posters, the ones who maybe let their guard slip every once in a while. It isn’t much of a contest who is more of a threat.

Porrim’s pursuer is the second type. And a purpleblood, on top of that.

It was luck that her current caravan stopped in this town. It was luck that Porrim needed to buy thread and bandages. It was luck that he spotted her coming out of the shop when he did, and it was some uncanny purpleblood intuition that led him to start to follow her.

She saw. She’s gotten very good at noticing little things – a second-too-long stare, a flicker in the corner of her eye – that mean danger. She’s gotten very good at being prey. She stole away to the canyons bordering the town, hoping to lose him quickly instead of leading him back to her caravan. But he’s intelligent, and perceptive, and _patient,_ everything that makes highblood bounty hunters so damn scary. And her caravan was supposed to leave at midnight, and it’s been at least half an hour since then.

A shower of pebbles clatters down the rock face. Porrim startles and gasps, but it’s only a chatterrat scrambling down from its nest. Porrim’s heart is pounding in her throat, every second of quiet and relative safety only multiplying her fear. Should she move, try to get up higher and find the town? Or would the sound draw him closer to her hiding pla _FOOTSTEPS –_

She huddles closer to the rock, pressed as flat and small as she can get, and listens. The hunter’s pace is a slow, easy saunter, broadcasting the absolute confidence he has in his kill. “Can’t hide from me forever, jadie,” he calls, voice soft but echoing throughout the whole canyon. “Scared trolls make MISTAKES.” His voice jumps into a roar on the last word. Porrim shudders. Kankri yelps. Neither of them want to die like this, please _please_ not like this.

The footsteps are moving closer. Porrim swallows and, fueled by panic, scrambles further along the circular base of the squat monolith she’s hiding behind. She sees an overhanging of rock just a few meters away and launches out from her hiding place, sprinting desperately across wide-open space and making it there alive and ducking underneath. Her whole body is trembling with terror and relief.

“I hear you running, jadie lady. I can’t see you yet, but I can _SMELL YOUR FEAR.”_

She’s never been more glad to see a cave in her life.

It’s not big enough to stand up in, and only deep enough that she won’t be seen from the outside, but there’s a small dry streambed leading out from under one of the walls that is just tall enough to squeeze under. She pulls Kankri and her pack in with her, and straightens up into a cave that is narrow, but tall enough for moonlight to stream in from natural gaps in the rock above. There’s no way the broad-shouldered bounty hunter will be able to fit in here. It’s perfect, an unbelievable godsend. She’ll wait until daybreak, then escape under the cover of sunlight and figure out where to go from there.

The streambed leads back to where the cave takes a sharp right and vanishes from sight, but Porrim has no desire to see where it leads. She needs to check it for potential dangers, and she will, but not before she takes a rest. Nothing that appears from around that bend will be more dangerous than what’s stalking around outside. And what’s the most dangerous thing that could happen, anyway? A cave monster. She’s very accomplished at murdering cave monsters, although she doesn’t miss it. Now that the initial relief of seeing this one has faded, she’s had enough of caves to last a lifetime. But it doesn’t escape her sense of irony that the very thing she’s been doing her best to avoid has just saved her life.

Porrim slides down the wall, takes a deep breath, tries to get her pulse down. Kankri noses at the opening of the bag, and she helps him open it so he can crawl up onto her lap. Like old times. Porrim and Kankri, hiding from monsters in caves. It’s bringing back bad memories, for both of them Porrim would bet, but Kankri’s pudgy furnace warmth helps to ground her and she snuggles him close. The faint green moonlight shines through the ceiling, casting everything in delicate lime and stark shadow. Kankri, fascinated, watches the chatterrats scrabble between their communal nests on the ceiling. It’s going to be a long night.

She’s almost managed to relax enough to convince herself that they are, in fact, both going to get through this alive, when the unthinkable happens.

“OH, JADIE LADY, you can’t hide from me in the _caves._ I’ve been playing hunter in these caves since I COULD WALK ON TWO LEGS INSTEAD OF SIX.”

Porrim pushes Kankri away and bolts to her feet, every nerve on fire and ears ringing from the force of the shout. She didn’t see him coming until he was right in front of her, didn’t even hear his footsteps. She falls into a strife stance, lipstick leaping into her hand, and hopes against hope that Kankri has hidden himself.

The purpleblood’s gaze drifts down nonchalantly and his eyes widen, and Porrim feels her stomach turn to lead even before he starts to speak. “A MUTANT WIGGLER, Maryam? That sure as hell wasn’t on the posters. Won’t you look wonderful AS PAINT ON – “

Porrim charges forward, face twisted in a snarl, chainsaw roaring and ready. Anger pounds hot in her veins, rawness and power crashing inside her like the unrelenting surf. _He threatened Kankri._ She brings the saw forward, her snarl tearing loose in a furious shriek.

He leaps _towards_ her, dodging the chainsaw, and she catches a too-close flash of a smile with too many teeth before a shock wrenches through her arm, hard. Her teeth clack together from the force and her fingers ache from the effort of holding onto the handle of the chainsaw – the one that is _now buried in solid rock._ She pulls once, in vain, before the hunter reaches out and grabs her wrists and _snap-snaps_ them both neatly. A half-formed scream rips out of her throat before he catches her in an air-crushing bear hug with one long arm. Her feet kick backwards on instinct, sharp heels scrabbling for contact with shins or toes, but nothing that she does connects. Every movement of her arms sends pain shrieking through them, but she fights back through the fog anyway because she can’t breathe. Tears are coursing unnoticed from her eyes, or it’s the blood pounding in her skull staining her vision green, and she blinks through a wave of dizziness and nausea – _she can’t breathe –_

The purpleblood’s claws clamp down into the flesh of her skull and twist. There’s a sickening crack and a sharp flash of pain. Blurrily, she sees the cave twisted to an angle it shouldn’t be, before he shoves her away. Porrim is dead before she hits the floor.

Kankri sees his guardian, crumpled on the floor with her neck sideways and eyes staring blankly just above his head, _likewhentheyweresixandplayingTHEGAMEshefelloffherhivetowerhivetowerandyoudidntknowwhatwaswrongwhyshewouldntgetupyousawherheadwaswrong,_ and _screeches._

He screeches as the Big One steps over his guardian, screeches as he’s lifted in one massive, sweaty hand up to the Big One’s eye level, screeches as the purple eyes there blur into the purple of another white-painted face. He screeches as he looks away from the lanky purple one dressed all in bones up to his guardian – _hisserverplayer_ – standing up and looking down at him, wind whipping at her hair and dress. He screeches as she stumbles, screeches as the bone man cries out, screeches as he wrenches his gaze away right before she hits the ground, screeches as the Big One carries him down into the cave and away from his _guardianserverplayerP O R R I M_. The Big One is smiling, saying something about paint, and the wiggler in his hand screeches screeches screeches as his mind is ripped between two terrifying realities for the first time.

The Big One – Carrak Carnus is his name – holds the screeching grub loosely by the scruff of his neck, wondering when he’ll shut up and if it’s worth the paint he’ll lose if he just bangs him against the wall now. Mutant blood, especially this pure of a cherry red, is immeasurably rare and will sell for a massive amount to the right buyers, not to mention look terrifying painted on his weapons and gear. And if he brings the wiggler with the girl’s corpse to claim his prize they’ll say it was part of the warrant and try to take it. He’ll come back for the corpse later, once this thing is at his hive and dead AND QUIET – 

“WILL YOU SHUT UP!!” he roars at the wiggler. Kankri, jolted out of his visions by the sudden shout, silences abruptly.

“God,” Carrak mutters. This job better be worth it.

* * *

Porrim opens her eyes.

Her pupils and irises are gone, obliterated and filled with a blinding yellow light. Underneath her crumpled body, her hair and skirts are spread across the musty ground. Her arms are outstretched, splinters of bone poking through the skin at her wrists and hands at nearly acute angles with her forearms. Her lungs lie deflated in her chest. Her heart does not beat.

Inside her hands, snapped muscles begin to regenerate, weaving back into their tight cords. Tendons pull themselves back together, dragging her hands across the stone floor into a more natural position. The shards of bone retreat back inside, leaving tiny lacerations in their wake, and even those scab over and heal in a matter of seconds.

As Porrim sits up, a series of clicks echo out from her neck as her vertebrae realign of their own accord. A wash of warm, tingly feeling flows down her chest and into her arms and legs as her severed spinal cord knits itself back together. 

Dizziness hits her like a wave, and she struggles to stay upright. There’s a rim of bright, bright yellow around the edges of her vision, but what she can see is clear. Clearer than she’s ever seen before. Everything ends in crisp, clean edges, and the colors are as intensely saturated as an oil painting. The light in the cave isn’t any brighter, but she can see as easily as if the moon was right overhead.

Porrim lifts her hands to her face, marveling at the way they seem to give off a harsh white light in the dark of the cave. Her new tattoos – intricate, vinelike coils down her arms and shoulders – are like slicks of ink against the brightness. As she looks down over her body, she realizes it’s not just her hands that are shining. Every part of her is radiating this strange, white glow.

There is one thought on her mind now, one thought that has been raging silently at her since she awoke. No panic to deal with, no fear, no pain, no confusion. _She must find the bounty hunter._ His stench is thick and cloying in the air, like a trail of congealing blood leading down into the dark recesses of the cave. It lies in her nose like a dead thing left in the sun, overpowering the smells of rock and stale water, calling to her darkly and urgently. 

It is the most sickening siren song she has ever felt, and she has no choice but to obey.

Porrim stumbles upright, realizing for the first time just how incredibly _thirsty_ she is. She swallows and licks her lips. This thirst is strange, not a thirst she’s used to – it’s thick and warm, almost velvet, almost a hunger. A deep, dark, irresistible urge, her tongue and throat and stomach all pulsing in anticipation for its satisfaction. The scent of the bounty hunter is putrid but vital raindrops in a desert, and she opens her mouth to let it flow back over her tongue.

Porrim is not disoriented, or hallucinating, or confused. She is thinking clearly. There is nothing in her mind except for thirst and a steadily growing sense of anger, and only two things she knows beyond all certainty. Those are all she needs.

She must find the bounty hunter.

And she must _drink._

She finds her chainsaw in a corner behind a stalagmite and thinks it must have rolled there after it deactivated when she dropped it, and returns it to her strife deck with savage delight. Then she crosses the cave to where it curves sharply away and follows the hunter’s scent down into the darkness.

Her whole body is tense with anticipation, and the back of her throat is throbbing with thirst, but the inside of her mind couldn’t be calmer. _Find the hunter. Drink._ As she ventures deeper underground there isn’t any light coming in from the ceiling, but her eerily glowing skin and eyes are all she needs to see. Even if that wasn’t the case, she could easily find her way using his scent, which is growing stronger with every minute. Porrim’s breath comes in short little gasps, and her stride lengthens urgently until she’s almost running, but her mind doesn’t leave that imperial state of calm.

She turns a corner, his smell so thick she can barely breathe, and then he’s there, walking tiredly in the opposite direction, oblivious to her approach. And _there,_ clenched in one massive fist, is _KANKRI._

An explosion of fury overtakes her mind, and the fragile crystal dam of calm shatters under it. Every other thought is swept away by her wrath and by her desire for this bastard’s complete and utter _destruction._ Blood-green haze clouds her sight and her bones are burning with the heat of the sun. She deploys her chainsaw like it’s a natural extension of her being and leaps up with rocketlike force, flying across the cave to the hunter, her mouth open in a vicious hiss like every angry wasp nest in the world at once, bringing the chainsaw down over her head as hard as she can. The bounty hunter turns, and for a tiny split second she can see true, genuine _fear_ in his eyes – 

\- and then there’s nothing in his eyes, because the chainsaw is cleaving his skull in two, blood and brains spraying out messily onto Porrim’s face. She squints and grinds her teeth and bears down and the chainsaw slices into the hunter’s chest and down through his torso, drenching Porrim’s whole front in blood and viscera, and finally wrenches free between his legs. Porrim staggers under the sudden weight and caps the chainsaw automatically.

She looks down at her dress – soaked with blood – and at the hunter’s bisected corpse, and it suddenly seems like the most obvious and natural thing in the world. Porrim drops to her knees between the corpse’s halves, cups her hands in the gore, and raises them to her mouth.

The hunter’s blood is rich and sharp, almost cold on her tongue, sliding down her throat and filling her body with buzzing energy. She swallows and drinks again, blood pouring down her chin and over her dress, staining her radiant skin purple, but the taste of the blood overrides her other senses and emotions and she cannot notice. Porrim gulps down mouthful after frenetic mouthful of blood, licking it off her hands, bending down to the floor to scoop it into her mouth as quickly as she can. Her hair falls around her face, into the lake of purple, and in a feverish haze she pulls the backup machetekind out of her strife deck and hacks it away. Nothing matters to her except that nothing gets in the way of her heavenly, inescapable, life-giving blood.

Porrim drinks until her face is sticky with half-congealed blood and the primal thirst inside her has been slated. She straightens up deliberately, running her tongue over her fangs to lick off the last residues of purple and wiping her hands ineffectively on her dress. Even though she remembers perfectly everything that happened, everything has a floating, unreal quality, as if she is waking up from a dream. That eerie, unthinking calm has faded with the thirst, and she feels like she’s just now starting to come back into her rational self.

_**KANKRI** WHERE’SKANKRI!!_

The thought smashes into her like a landslide and she bolts to her feet, panic and fear pumping her now-beating heart into overdrive. She doesn’t see him anywhere out in the open, even though his smell is sharp with fear in the air, and she scrambles to check under any overhangs or in any crevasses small enough for him to squeeze. “Kankri?”

Her voice sounds different in her ears, and not just because of the shrill of panic in it. It’s fuller, richer, in a way it shouldn’t be. There’s no response from the cave, not even a shifting of pebbles caused by motion. Porrim clears her throat and tries again, calling down the dark passage in front of her. _“Kankri?”_

Echoes bounce her own strange voice back to her, but nothing else. Porrim tries not to panic and starts carefully down the passage. 

Eventually she finds him hiding behind a tall cluster of stalagmites. He’s crying, not screeching, which is unlike him, huge red tears pouring silently down his face; but thank whatever gods exist he’s _unharmed._ Porrim feels her entire body go limp with relief, falling to her knees beside the stalagmites. She aims a tired smile through a gap in the pillars of rock. “Hey there, little bug,” she rasps.

Kankri just stares at her and swallows, eyes too wide and too bright. She reaches for him, trying to give some modicum of comfort, but he emits a miserable squeak and squishes down even further. Porrim pulls back, dismayed, but then realizes what she must look like to him. A yellow-eyed phantom, skin glowing brighter than a firefly and still drenched in the noxious blood of her murderer – no wonder he’s horrified.

“It’s okay, Kankri,” she murmurs, trying to be soothing. “It’s me. It’s Porrim. And I won’t ever hurt you, okay?”

He doesn’t look convinced. Porrim pulls her hand away, leaving Kankri blinking in the dark after its glow. She shuffles her position around until she’s almost lying down, puts her elbows on the ground and rests her chin in her hands, gazing pleadingly past the stalagmites at her heartbreakingly frozen wiggler. “Please come out, little bug. It’s me. You know it’s me.”

But Kankri doesn’t act like he does. He blinks at her, once, and that’s all the reaction that she gets.

She could probably reach him if she stretched her arm all the way back there, but she doesn’t want to do that. He could panic and try to attack her, and she doesn’t want to traumatize him any further than he already is. Porrim needs to find a way to get him to trust her enough for him to come out by himself.

She scoots back from his line of sight, leaving him a clear means of escape. Rocking up to crouch on her heels, Porrim swallows once and begins to sing.

_“My sylladex is packed and I am surfacebound…”_

Her voice is fundamentally changed, fuller and richer and throatier somehow, filling the cave with captivating sound. She almost drops the melody in shock. She isn’t this.

But, somehow…she is, now. _“A machete and a flashlight guide my way…”_

_“And once I leave the pack I am never coming back, cause the sky will keep me company night and day.”_ She senses movement in the corner of her eye, but doesn’t dare turn and look. 

As Porrim starts the chorus, Kankri creeps shakily into her field of vision. He snuffles at her blood-soaked skirts, screwing up his face in distrust and fear, but she holds a licked-clean hand in front of him and he calms marginally. Even her phosphorescent skin isn’t as scary as the dark purple stains covering most of her dress.

He gives a small, hesitant chirp, looking from her hand to her face back to her hand, and noses at her fingers, allowing himself to be petted and stroked. He doesn’t hide in her, like he always does, but Porrim lets herself relax anyway. His heartbeat is far too fast, of course, but luckily he doesn’t seem to be in shock. A great weight has been lifted off of her, and she smiles a relieved smile, glad to have her wiggler back. “Hey, Kanny,” she whispers. 

Her normal voice hasn’t changed much, compared to her singing one – she’s glad for that, at least. She’s still nowhere near having processed all the other changes that have happened to her, and is just barely holding off a breakdown for Kankri’s sake. The only way to stop the panic and fear that bubble up inside her at the thought of the dead bounty hunter not far down the hallway or the deeply unsettling sensation of _feeling_ her heart begin to beat again is just to violently not THINK about it.

They shouldn’t stay here any longer. There will be people out looking for the hunter. Eventually. And she really needs to get all this blood cleaned off, and probably try to even out her bizarre new haircut. Porrim feels a surge of revulsion towards the state of wildness that led her to mindlessly slash at her hair until it could no longer interfere with her feast, but she pushes it away. “Let’s get out of here. Alright, Kanny?”

Kankri looks up at her, eyes too solemn and huge for a wiggler, and nods soundlessly. She picks him up and holds him snug against her chest, tempted to never let him go again. It couldn’t matter less if he’s seen now. He won’t be as conspicuous as her.

She finds her chainsaw on the floor of the room with the hunter, where it rolled after she abandoned it in the first throes of her feeding frenzy. Kankri scrunches his eyes shut as she skirts the corpse, surrounded by a much smaller pool of blood than she honestly expected to be left, and again as she retrieves her bag from the dead-end hall where she was killed. They squeeze out under the gap they came in to discover a still, clouded night, heavy with the smell of rain. Going by the position of the moon, there’s just under four hours left until daybreak.

Porrim leaves the canyons in the opposite direction of the city. The land gentles into high, arching hills and valleys filled with small copses of trees. In one valley, Porrim finds a jackpot of a wild pear tree. The treat puts Kankri in a better (and stickier) mood, and the sour-sweet juices help cover up the taste of purple still heavy in Porrim’s mouth. In the second, she finds a stream.

She can smell the purity of it. No need to check for rotting animals or poisonous algae here. Porrim sets an eager Kankri down to splash in the shallows near the bank and peels off her dress and shoes. The dress goes downstream, held in place underwater by a rock, so the blood can soak out of it without reaching her or Kankri. Finally, Porrim wades in herself, immersing her entire body in the deliciously cool water.

She ducks her head underwater and scrubs at her hair, feeling all the grime and sweat wash out and float away. Her palms work at the crusted blood on her face, their glow ethereal even through her eyelids. When she doesn’t bother to surface for several minutes, Kankri paddles over with a worried chirp, stumpy legs flailing furiously to keep him afloat. Porrim hears the noise faintly from underwater and surfaces, gasping in a breath she doesn’t need. She picks him up and takes him back to the shore, placing him back in the shallows and using her cupped hands to trickle water over his head and body, rinsing out matted hair and a grimy carapace. His wet curls are long enough to flop over his eyes, and he squirms and tries to bat them out of the way with his paws. Porrim can’t help but smile at his confusion.

When she’s cleaned off as much as she can with just water, she swims over to her pack and uses the scant, precious sliver of soap to eliminate all traces of the canyons and the bounty hunter from herself and Kankri. Once the soap is gone and Kankri’s gotten bored of playing with pebbles on the banks, Porrim slips into a clean dress and pulls the bloody one from the river. The stains have washed out for the most part, but traces of them are still there, likely permanent reminders of an event that Porrim would really rather just forget. She doesn’t want to be a rainbow drinker; she doesn’t want to light up like a yellow-eyed glowworm and she doesn’t want to have to feel that achingly enticing thirst.

There isn’t enough darkness left to make it back to civilization tonight. Porrim builds a quick but toasty fire – not for her, but for Kankri, who gets cold so easily – sets up the small tent they use when other shelter can’t be found, and feeds Kankri a late supper. She isn’t hungry.

Porrim sits down heavily, just within arm’s reach of Kankri, who is occupied with his food. She’s been functioning on autopilot since they got out of the river, and doesn’t have any clear memories of anything since then. Not thinking about what happened in the canyons was a good strategy for a while, kept her from breaking down and helped her do what she needed to to care for Kankri, but it’s getting harder and harder. She wonders if it’s shock or something.

Because she has every right to be in shock. If her body can even do shock anymore. Rainbow drinkers don’t exist. They’re tales made up to scare wigglers into not leaving their beds during the day. They are _made up_. But now _this_ is happening; now she has the heightened senses and the speed and strength and glow. She’s drank someone’s _blood,_ for god’s sake, and gotten some sort of bizarre, terrible sustenance from it. Why is freaky stuff always happening to _her?_ It doesn’t feel real.

Her life never feels real. That’s how she knows that it is.

Idly, Porrim drops her gaze to her hands, turning them over in repulsed fascination, noticing how they just barely shake. In the light of the fire, they hardly seem to shine at all. She wonders if she’ll ever find a way to turn the light off. Surely there must be some way for her to go through life without looking like some monstrous phantom. 

It’s more than that, though, she realizes. She can’t let herself be seen by other trolls when she’s glowing. She’d be dubbed a mutant and culled on sight. And even though she thinks she could take a few culling drones at this point, in the end she’ll be doomed. They’ll both be doomed, more importantly. Porrim wills her skin to stop glowing, to turn itself off. Nothing happens.

She pushes her brand new bangs off of her forehead, only for them to fall straight back into place. Damp strands of hair cling scratchily to the back of her neck and forehead, getting itchier and weirder as they dry. She remembers intending vaguely to do something about her hair once it was clean, but decides to put it off until sunset. Not like she has to impress anyone tomorrow, so who cares if she spends one night looking like a scruffy feral who hacks at her hair with a machete when it gets in her way?

(Porrim does. Porrim cares.)

But it’s just one more new thing she does not have the energy or stability to deal with tonight. She bets it’ll fluff up when it dries, though, and look nice and intimidating. There’s something about wild, thick hair that is automatically scary to trollkind. That’s a plus.

Kankri crawls up on her lap, squirms around for a bit in search of a comfortable position, flops onto his back and closes his eyes. Porrim is overcome with a feeling of relief and gratitude – he trusts her, even after this Kankri still trusts her and knows her enough to entrust his safety to her without a second thought. Not for the first time by far, it hits Porrim how much she loves him. What a strange, sweet, beautiful little creature, and how much more his life means every day.

It’s counterintuitive, she knows, but everything seems more manageable with Kankri asleep on her lap. She still has confusions and worries, so many worries that could end up endangering them both – will she ever turn the glow off, when is she going to have to _feed_ again. But somehow now, it seems feasible to just leave them for tomorrow, let what comes their way come, and walk into the future one slow step at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((TW for _lots_ of blood and significant gore, body horror, fairly graphic descriptions of death, etc. Skip from _"she can't breathe - "_ to "He screeches as the Big One steps over his guardian", then from "Porrim opens her eyes" to "Dizziness hits her like a wave", then "true, genuine fear in his eyes" to "the hunter's blood is rich and sharp" if that bugs you.))
> 
> thanks so much to everyone who commented!! I'm so sorry i haven't responded to the majority of you, i've been busy with this and other parts of life, but I'll do my best to reply as soon as I can. :) I'm pretty proud of this chapter - what do you guys think?


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